Wise vs Bank Telegraphic Transfer Malaysia 2026: Real Total Cost Compared

RM 343.53. That is what the exchange rate quietly costs you on a RM 20,000 telegraphic transfer to US dollars through Maybank. The fee printed on your receipt is RM 10.80. Both numbers are real, and only one of them is advertised.

What The RM 10 Fee Actually Covers

Three of Malaysia's largest banks publish their remittance charges openly, and to their credit the numbers are easy to find. Maybank charges a flat RM 10 service fee for a Foreign Telegraphic Transfer to any country in any currency through Maybank2u or the MAE app. CIMB charges RM 10 through Clicks. Public Bank charges RM 30 in cable charges to most countries, RM 15 to Singapore, and RM 10 for foreign workers and for students paying education costs.

Two things get added that are easy to miss. The first is tax: Maybank states that an 8% SST applies to both the service fee and the agent bank fee, and CIMB notes its charges are exclusive of 8% SST. That turns RM 10 into RM 10.80. The second is the branch penalty. Walk into a Maybank branch instead of using the app and the cable charge is RM 30, not RM 10.

One charge recently disappeared, and the comparison sites have not noticed. Public Bank announced on 25 November 2025 that commission charges for Foreign Telegraphic Transfers via PBe would cease from 28 November 2025. Several English-language comparison pages still describe a "RM 2 commission" on Public Bank transfers. It was removed nine months ago.

The Total Cost On RM 1,000, RM 5,000 And RM 20,000

Every cell below is computed, not quoted. The method and the arithmetic are in the source note underneath the table.

Ready to check your own amount? Wise shows the full fee and the exchange rate before you enter any personal details, so you can price your exact transfer and corridor against the table above without opening an account.

Where The Other 97% Hides

On a RM 20,000 transfer through Maybank, the advertised fee is 3% of what the transfer actually costs you. The other 97% is the board rate. This is the whole reason a RM 10 fee can sit next to a RM 354 bill without anybody breaking a rule.

A bank's Selling TT rate is the price at which it sells you foreign currency. The interbank mid-market rate is what that currency is worth between banks. The difference is margin, and it is priced into the rate rather than shown as a line item, which is why it never appears on a receipt.

None of the three banks publishes this markup as a percentage. We checked all three fee schedules and all three rate pages. They publish the board rate, which is accurate and complete, and they publish the fee. What they do not publish is the arithmetic connecting the two, and Public Bank's rate page adds that its published rates "may not be updated based on the prevailing rates and should only be used for reference and illustration purposes only."

The flat fee is why small transfers look worse in percentage terms and big ones look better. It is also why the ranking flips: at RM 1,000, Public Bank is the most expensive bank because RM 32.40 dominates. At RM 20,000 it ties with Maybank as the cheapest, because its board rate is the tightest of the three. If you are married to one bank, the amount you are sending decides whether its fee or its rate is your problem.

Maybank adds one wrinkle worth knowing: it advertises better rates on transfers of RM 10,000 and above through Maybank2u and the MAE app, and better rates again for Premier, Privilege and Private customers. Our RM 20,000 figure uses the public board rate, so a qualifying customer may do better than RM 354.33. The bank does not publish what the improved rate is.

The Charge Nobody Will Quote You In Advance

A SWIFT payment can be routed through an intermediary bank, and that bank can take a cut from the money while it is in transit. Neither you nor your bank necessarily knows in advance how much. This is the column we could not compute, and leaving it out is the reason every bank total above is a floor.

Maybank says this itself, and unusually plainly. For 24 listed currencies including SGD, INR, CNY and THB, its own page warns that the beneficiary "may not receive the full amount sent by the Sender, as the recipient bank might change the charging option from OUR to SHA, deducting their fees from the total amount payable," and that "some charges may not be disclosed to the Sender in advance." Public Bank's schedule says agent charges "may be applicable depending on the currency and beneficiary country."

What that looks like in practice was described by a Malaysian sender on r/MalaysianPF in July 2026, testing small transfers through a different bank, RHB, into a Singapore investment account. They sent SGD 100 and the account received SGD 80. They sent USD 100 and it received USD 85. Roughly RM 20 in fees had already been charged at the Malaysian end. The receiving firm confirmed it had waived its own incoming charges, so the deduction happened somewhere in the routing. One reply put it accurately: "Depending on your TT routing, it can also be charged by the intermediary bank."

That is one user's reported experience on small test amounts, not a published fee schedule, and the percentages on a USD 100 test say nothing about the percentage on USD 5,000, because a flat SGD 20 deduction is 20% of SGD 100 and 0.4% of SGD 5,000. We include it because it is the only concrete figure anyone puts on this charge, and because the banks' own wording confirms the mechanism.

There is a way to close it off. Maybank's Guaranteed OUR service covers AUD, EUR, GBP and USD and guarantees the recipient receives the exact amount sent, with all agent charges borne by you and disclosed upfront for a fixed agent fee. Maybank also removed the agent fee entirely on USD transfers to its own overseas branches. If a specific number has to land, such as a tuition invoice or a property deposit, that guarantee is worth paying for. It is the one thing in this article a bank does better than Wise.

Our wider comparison of Malaysian international transfer services covers the non-bank alternatives that also avoid intermediary routing, and the Wise versus Instarem head-to-head is the more useful read if you have already ruled the banks out.

The Limits That Actually Apply

We went looking for a RM 2,500 per-transfer threshold and could not find one. It does not appear in Bank Negara's Foreign Exchange Policy, nor on the fee or limit pages of Maybank, CIMB or Public Bank. If you have seen that figure quoted, treat it as unverified until someone shows you a first-party source.

The thresholds that do exist are these. Maybank caps online overseas transfers at RM 100,000 a day for individuals and RM 150,000 for sole proprietors, shared across FTT and its other overseas products. CIMB caps Clicks transfers at RM 50,000 a day for standard customers and RM 200,000 for Preferred, and requires supporting documents above RM 50,000, though not for payments up to RM 50,000 to immediate family or for education.

Bank Negara's own limit is about purpose, not size. A Malaysian resident who has domestic ringgit borrowing may invest up to RM 1 million equivalent per calendar year in foreign currency assets funded by converting ringgit. A resident with no domestic ringgit borrowing may invest any amount. Sending money to family, paying tuition or covering travel is not investment and does not consume that allowance.

Ready to compare against your own bank's quote? The useful test is to open your banking app and Wise side by side for the same amount and currency, and compare the number of dollars each says will arrive, not the fee each says it will charge.

Where This Argument Breaks Down

Wise is not free, and on the smallest transfers the gap narrows a lot. At RM 1,000 it costs RM 13.38 against Maybank's RM 27.98. Saving RM 15 is real but it is not the kind of number that should make anybody switch banks in a hurry.

Account closures are a genuine risk that a bank TT does not carry. Wise terminates accounts, sometimes abruptly, and the r/MalaysianPF archive contains threads from people dealing with exactly that. Your bank is far less likely to close your account for a routine remittance. If Wise is your only route out, you have a single point of failure.

Wise also warns of additional SWIFT fees when you send USD to a recipient outside the United States, which is precisely the case for the Malaysia-to-Singapore USD flows a lot of local investors run. That is the same intermediary problem in a smaller form, and it is not in our RM 132.34 figure either.

And there are cheaper routes than both for specific jobs. Malaysian investors funding brokerage accounts frequently use Sunway Money at a flat RM 8, which beats Wise outright above roughly RM 1,300 if the corridor is supported. Our Wise versus Revolut comparison covers the multi-currency angle if you also spend abroad rather than only sending.

Our Verdict

Our pick: Wise, on cost, at every amount we tested. The gap is RM 15 on RM 1,000, roughly RM 60 to RM 75 on RM 5,000, and RM 222 to RM 288 on RM 20,000, all before the correspondent deduction that only the bank route carries.

Choose a bank telegraphic transfer instead when the recipient will only accept a SWIFT wire from a bank, when you need a bank-issued paper trail for an immigration or property file, when your currency is not supported, or when the recipient must receive an exact figure and Maybank's Guaranteed OUR can promise it.

If you use a bank anyway, two changes cost nothing. Send through the app rather than a branch, which is the difference between RM 10 and RM 30 at both Maybank and Public Bank. And compare board rates before you send, because on RM 20,000 the spread between the best and worst of the three banks we checked was RM 87.30, nearly nine times the transfer fee you were worrying about.

Check the number for yourself before you send anything. Wise shows the exchange rate and the total fee upfront, so the comparison against your bank's quote takes about two minutes and requires no account.

Last updated: 20 August 2026. Bank fees verified from Maybank, CIMB and Public Bank's own published fee schedules. Exchange rates from each bank's own board and from Bank Negara Malaysia's published interbank rates, 19 August 2026. Wise pricing quoted live on 20 August 2026. Rates change daily, so re-check your own amount before sending.